We recently released our second annual report on clean-energy consumer trends. Commissioned by SolarCity and Clean Edge, it's based on a January 2015 survey of 1,400 homeowners by Zogby Analytics.

The report snaps a picture of factors helping push the double-digit growth of clean-energy products and services.

Digging deeply into the data, we found some surprising-and not so surprising-dynamics at work.* We've been releasing these insights in the days leading up to our webinar today, April 20th. Here's the third and final round of findings:

Kum-baya? Well, sort of

Ok, it's a polarized electorate. But Republicans and Democrats (outside of Congress, at least) do agree on some key points related to clean energy.

Fifty percent of all respondents chose solar as the most important energy source for America's future. Solar was the top choice for both Republicans and Democrats.

We also saw bipartisan support-though not parity-for clean-energy policy. 82 percent of Democrats said they favor federal tax incentives supporting the growth of solar and wind industries. 67 percent Republicans and 72 percent of Independents favor these policies as well.

But don't expect a political group-hug anytime soon. Motivations for buying clean-energy products and services do vary by party. This is consistent with what we see in national polls.

At 43 percent, Democrats were more likely to say they'd make clean energy purchases to reduce their environmental impact. This compares to 25 percent of Republicans.

More Republicans than Democrats, however, are motivated by the lower maintenance of clean-energy products-38 percent to 27 percent, respectively.

Even Grumpy Cat approves

Pet ownership-yes, pet ownership-seems to be an indicator of peoples' attitudes toward clean energy.

Both cat and dog owners said they make clean energy purchases to save money-86 percent and 82 percent, respectively.

However, 40 percent of cat owners said they make clean energy purchases to reduce their environmental impact. This compares to 31 percent of dog owners. Could it be-as suggested here -that introverted, bookish cat owners are more informed when it comes to these issues? (Rest assured, SolarCity's dog owners do not agree with the headline of the linked article.)

To learn more about the survey, and clean energy trends for 2015, check out the report.

*Based on a confidence interval of 95%, the margin of error for the survey of 1,400 homeowners is +/- 2.7 percentage points. Subsets have a larger margin of error than the whole data set. We do not rely on the validity of very small subsets of the data, especially sets smaller than 50 - 75 respondents. At that size subset we can make generalizations, but in these cases the data is more qualitative than quantitative.
distributed by